Embattled Los Angeles City Council candidate Joe Bray-Ali admitted Friday to having extramarital affairs, failing to pay taxes and to other questionable behavior in a defiant statement that appeared to come in response to his critics.

“I’ve been called a hippie, a racist, a Republican, a bigot, a transphobe, a hipster and now you know what else is coming my way,” he wrote in the statement posted on his Facebook and Twitter pages.

“This election is bigger than me, and I can take the hits,” he continued. “The network of supporters and donors I’ve built can take the hits.”

Friday’s statement is Bray-Ali’s latest in addressing a political storm that has setback his bid to unseat incumbent Gil Cedillo to represent Council District 1 in a May 16 runoff election.

On one discussion thread titled “Cuck, it’s what’s for dinner,” Bray-Ali pontificates on whether a group of people in a photo could be categorized as “Africans” or “a n—–.”

Bray-Ali has maintained that the posts do not reflect has real views and were made to engage “hate-mongers,” but he apologized to supporters Wednesday and said it was a mistake to have made the comments.

The former bike shop owner reiterated in Friday’s statement that he is “a human being with flaws, like everyone,” but also made additional revelations. They include not paying more than $48,000 in sales taxes and audit costs for his business Flying Pigeon-LA LLC.

He also wrote that he “slept with several other women from 2011 to 2014. Not my wife. For a time I even had a Tinder profile.”

Bray-Ali has been married since 2008.

He added that he “said many profane, rude, statements to people I’ve gotten into arguments with online.”

After listing these examples of “dirt” on himself, Bray-Ali then described the recent fallout from his previous comments as “a distraction.”

In a telephone interview Friday, the council hopeful confirmed that he wrote the statement, saying he thinks the list of mistakes “is everything that I could scrub from the interior of my mind.”

The past few days have been “taxing” for him and his campaign workers, he said. But when asked how he was doing, he added that he’s gotten some sleep and is “hydrated.”

He went on to say he continues to knock on doors to appeal to voters, and says his pitch is that he will “fight for affordable housing, make the streets clean and safe … and make sure council members respond to people’s needs and return phone calls … not just to connected insiders.”

“My reputation is already mud,” Bray-Ali admitted. “I’m just trying to give people a viable option.”

Bray-Ali is seeking to represent a geographically diverse district that includes northeast Los Angeles communities such as Highland Park, Westlake and Echo Park, as well as Koreatown, Chinatown and Pico-Union.

In recent weeks, Bray-Ali, 38, garnered several major endorsements, including from the Los Angeles Times and Councilman Mitch O’Farrell. But most of that support has since collapsed, with O’Farrell and the Times pulling their support this week.

Bray-Ali, who is known as a bicycle activist, also lost the endorsement of the cycling advocacy group Bike the Vote L.A. on Friday.

There were also calls for him to withdraw from the race, including from Council President Herb Wesson who led six other council members in a statement demanding Bray-Ali halt his campaign.

Bray-Ali responded to the elected officials Friday by saying he was “never reliant on their support in the first place.”

“I’ve just got to push,” he said by phone. “I have never had a political consultant come to my campaign and had anything to say other than that I have no chance … and that I’m an idiot … I have continued to show they are wrong.”

Elizabeth Chou has reported on Los Angeles City Hall government and politics since 2013, first with City News Service, and now the Los Angeles Daily News since the end of 2016. She grew up in the Los Angeles area, and formerly a San Gabriel Valley girl. She now resides in the other Valley, and is enjoying exploring her new San Fernando environs. She previously worked at Eastern Group Publications, covering Montebello, Monterey Park, City of Commerce, and Vernon.

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